


Before

by Kheta



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Depression, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hurt Scott McCall, Kinda Graphic Self Harm, M/M, Mostly Gen, POV Second Person, Sciles bros, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, eventually, happy endings, supportive family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8659717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kheta/pseuds/Kheta
Summary: Before there was Allison and Derek and Peter and being a freakin’ werewolf, back when Mom and Dad were no longer Mom and Dad and were becoming more like Mom –and– Dad, you had a thing.Scars, razor blades, blood, type of thing.You’re only like eleven when you start it and you try and convince yourself that it kinda starts as an accident, maybe.





	1. Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott starts cutting and he doesn't know what's happening, but he finally feels free.

Before there was Allison and Derek and Peter and being a freakin’ werewolf, back when Mom and Dad were no longer Mom and Dad and were becoming more like Mom –and– Dad, you had a thing.

Scars, razor blades, blood, type of thing.

You’re only like eleven when you start it and you try and convince yourself that it kinda starts as an accident, maybe.

So you’re in your room and you’re holding a scalpel that you swiped from mom’s work and it’s really shiny. You’re not too sure what you’re going to do with it, but you just keep thinking that Mom and Dad would be happier if you weren’t there. That Stiles would want a friend who can play with him without an asthma attack interfering and you’re there, eleven with smooth shiny skin and no shirt.

You have no idea why you have no shirt on, but you did, you look at your skin and you see wrong and bad and asthma. Even though asthma isn’t actually that bad and your mom said lots of people have it, you still hate it, because it still makes you different.

Every inch of your skin is weird and different and you take the scalpel, hold it to where you think your lungs are and you press because you want at least one thing about you to be normal. Maybe, maybe if you weren’t a kid, you might have pressed deeper and gotten rid of that stupid, deficit lung, but you’re a child and the pain stings so sharply that the scalpel falls to the ground and blood oozes down your pale, awful, bad skin and you stop thinking.

All those little sounds and ticks vanish, swallowed by a pure whiteness that haunts you daily. Everything is silent, makes sense in a way it never made sense before. It's like you've finally learnt how to breathe– sharp and fuelled by the adrenaline pain caused. It feels so beautiful, until you see the blood seep onto the ground and thank goodness mom suddenly got called into work because you manage to awkwardly cover the bleeding wound with your favourite Spider-Man towel and clean the floor with pieces of toilet paper wet under the faucet before she gets back.

That’s like the first time you ever do it and the scar is large and deep, about the length of your forefinger. It scabs over violently, stinging for days and when you begin to cough because of asthma, it burns. But your hands always stray back to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk. First Ao3 fic and first self-harm fic, hopefully it works out. Thanks for reading.


	2. Beginning + Stiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott doesn't know how to stop. If he wants to stop. Stiles finds out.

You always find yourself thinking about it. Thinking and thinking and hoping and three weeks later you’re in the bathroom, back against the door in case your baby-sitter walks in. You’ve still got the scalpel and you just do it. 

Small, quick and sharp. Again the world stops spinning and you don’t think and it’s just so great.

So you keep doing it and you tell no one because it’s weird and you stop swimming shirtless. You stop swimming at all actually, telling your mom your asthma’s been playing up; avoiding doctor visits because they might ask you to raise your shirt; not telling mom if you feel sick because she’ll take you to the doctors.

It like, becomes a weird twisted little game where you try and hide everything, but Stiles notices. 

You’re at Stiles house and it’s the third time you’ve been there since his Mom died and first since you started the whole scalpel thing and you brought your scalpel, which was a dumb idea, but being without the scalpel is hard.

Stiles is going through your bag, because you told him about the porno mag you found under your mom’s bed, which probably belonged to your dad. You’re kind of uninterested in the mag and you fell asleep at three am, so you’re not really thinking. But you’re not too disappointed either.

Since Stiles is messy, everything is strewn out of you bag, including a bloody face cloth you forgot to clean, your trusty scalpel and some bandages you took from mom’s work.

“What the–” He mutters, mind working a mile a minute and you freeze.

You have no excuse that’d appease him.

“Scott what is this?”

You don’t answer. You can’t answer.

“Scott- buddy why do you have all of this?”

Stiles is smart. You know that, he knows that and he’s pieced together a reason why, he’s been in the hospital enough to stumble across this kind of thing once, he’s curious enough to find out more.

He knows, but he doesn’t want to and you're tired, so you close your eyes and wish to disappear. Maybe then everything would be alright.

“Scotty please, you didn’t do this to yourself, did you?” He asked in confusion and you just turn and look at him, eyes wide and desperate and you nod.

You don’t want to nod, logically you shouldn’t nod, but you do. Because he’s Stiles. He sucks in a breath and looks at you with sad eyes and you know he knows there’s more to everything than just the whole scalpel thing. There’s the thoughts and the sadness and the feeling of worthlessness. But like how you rarely ever bring up the panic attacks, he won’t bring this up.

However since he’s still Stiles, your best friend Stiles, he hugs you. He hugs you in a way that make the scabs burn, but still you kind of melt and you don’t say anything for a while, but when you do it’s about video games and inane topics you two don’t really care about. It is not about divorced parents, dead mothers, or weird cutting habits. Those are the conversations reserved for wide-awake midnight talks. Right now it’s safe time, daylight talks and play pretend.

When the lights go off at ten, because Mr.Stilinski's been real strict about the curfew lately, according to Stiles, you two talk. Talk about video games, comic books and t.v series. Talk about girls and celebrities and giggle as you hold up the porno under the mini torch Stiles hid under his bed. Talk about useless things until Stiles clock shows 12:36 and he looks at you, specks of light filtering through the window on his thin, worried face. The serious look emerges, the let’s talk about everything look and you haven’t done this since Stiles mom first got admitted to the hospital and Stiles got diagnosed with ADHD.

You sigh and nod, heart freezing over, hands itching.

The two of you have no idea what to say, it feels like it’s been too long since you’ve talked- and for goodness sake you’re kids. Eleven and too young- too dumb to know what to say.

“I don’t think I can stop.”

It’s the first thing you’ve ever said about the whole cutting thing. Stiles, you can barely make him out through the street light coming in through his window, but you know he’s all kinds of tense and concerned.

“Can I help you?” Stiles queries, something like desperation in his voice.

“No,” you answer, because you’ve always been too honest with him and you haven’t learned how to lie to him yet.

There’s a dark hush after that, the sound of Stiles heavy breath and your shallow gulps of air. Finally Stiles finds his voice and his words send a bitter-sweet pang through you.

“I’m not gonna lose you Scott,” he exclaims, a challenge, a declaration and part of you is touched he cares so much, the rest of you is screaming at him to stop caring.

In the minutes later, you both fall asleep, somewhere between bliss and stress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this whole story as a one shot, but putting it in chapters seemed more logical. Hope it works that way, haven't done much to the formatting though. Thanks for reading.


	3. Somewhere in between+Danny&Jackson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott hasn't stopped hurting himself, more people are finding out and he just wants to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of anxiety attacks and suicide attempt below.

You keep doing it.

The cutting that is.

Keep at it until your chest is little more than scar tissues, some large and lumpy, most thin and precise. No one knows, not really.

You think Danny might know something, because he ran into you once and blood, thinly stopped by wet tissue paper, seeped through your yellow–why yellow, why not black- top. He freaked out, insisted you go to the infirmary until you plainly told him to butt out when he didn’t give up to your other protest. He’s been watching you since, but he says nothing and you don’t give him the chance to say anything.

Stiles notices, but other than pained looks or sad gazes, he’s pretty good at not bothering you. He sends you links through emails sometimes, when he notices you getting too lost and depressed, about people who’ve stopped, information about youth groups. Whenever he does that you stop talking to him for a few days, until the loneliness becomes too much and you cave in, inviting him over. He doesn’t tell you how much it bothers him- if it even bothers him, but sometimes he treads carefully around you after those incidents. Like he doesn’t want you to ignore him again.

After those little cold shoulders, he grips you at night when he thinks you’re asleep, fingers tight on your pajama top as if to stop you from leaving. You hate how little you care about him in those moments. Hate how all you can think is, let me go.

This pattern keeps going on for about two years, you’re nearly fourteen now, with the prospect of high-school looming ever so closely you can feel it. It’s about here the suicide attempts begin.

You’ve been cutting for two and a half years, you still feel the first scar, even if it’s pretty much vanished from sight. And the thing is, not much has changed. Sure, you’re older, you have different classes and Dad’s left, hasn’t visited in more than a year. You still have asthma. You’re still Scott and you don’t want to be Scott; Scott with the bad grades, the absent Mom and the trove of scars. 

You think you’d rather be dead. Six feet under, eternal rest type of dead.

That’s new.

You’re thirteen, going on fourteen in a few months, in the boys washroom at school with a razor, your scalpel was found by Mom last week in your bedroom and you had to sweat through some ridiculously unbelievable lie before she just shrugged her shoulders and threw it away. Razors are easier to cart around and hide, but you miss the familiar sting of the scalpel.

But that doesn’t matter right now, right now all you see is wrong and bad and horrible and tired, so you take the razor and slowly chip away at your skin. White bleeding red and red revealing white, the wounds gape wide, almost awe-inspiring and the pain is constant adrenaline. You thrive and sing, longing to just stop being and someone pounds on the door.

In your hurry to just end things, you’ve forgotten something. There’s only two good stalls, of the four in this bathroom and you’ve been in this one for a while. While your cuts are deeper than usual, you’re still conscious and you’re pretty sure that if you don’t get out soon, if someone comes in- that is too much trouble for you to deal with right now.

“Hurry up McCall! You’ve been in there forever!”

It’s Jackson. Jackson’s outside, you’re bleeding so much you could probably run a blood-drive by yourself and Jackson is outside.

You curse, fingers fumbling for some toilet paper while you cover your wounds sloppily.

“Y-yeah just wait up!” You shout back, voice cracking oddly.

When your wounds are covered with rows of toilet paper, you bend to swipe up whatever blood is on the ground, which is thankfully just some long trails, not deep pools. Then you open your bag, chuck two shirts and a hoodie on and hold in the gasp from moving your torso too much. Then you push your way out of the stall. You remember too late about the razor.

“Ew, what the hell’s this McCall!?”

Turning, you see Jackson and you don’t even have to walk closer to know what he’s pointing at. It’s your razor, still wet with blood and discarded on the ground when you were cleaning, falling out of your line of sight.

You look at it awkwardly and shrug, it’s a wonder that even feeling so sluggish you can still remember to lie.

“I dunno, didn’t even notice it before,” you breathe out, face neutral but it feels like your heart’s pounding with at least mach 10 speed, way too fast.

Jackson crinkles his nose but says nothing. You leave the washroom, remembering to stop and wash your hands if only to clear them of the thin spots of blood that you swear taints your skin.

You don’t go back to class. Can’t go back. You barely make it to the library, before collapsing in the music and theater section. It’s tiny, hidden behind the sci-fi and fantasy section. No one comes to this side during class sessions and you slowly come undone, dry sobs leaving your mouth but no tears fall. 

That sucks. Tears- they’d justify your pain. Show that it’s there, but instead all you have are the whirling thoughts. 

Everything feels like absolute crap, but at the same time it feels like nothing’s even wrong. Half of you is screaming at the world, condemning it for ever letting you live. The other half of you is telling you that you’re stupid and is coercing you into not doing anything.

So you sit there, eyes blank, breath short and mind slowly decomposing. Slowly switching off on you.

You wonder what your mom would say if you didn’t go home today. You wonder what would happen if you never went home. You wonder when the world started just being nothing. No color. No sound. It’s just you and the press of books against your back. Nothing else. It’s lonely, but all you see is blankness.

“Scotty, Scotty, you there bud,” A voice prompts.

You look up vacantly, no one’s in front of you. Only, blurs. It’s all blurs and it take like twenty minutes for the blurs to form shapes. You can hear Stiles, can feel him at times, but muted, as if he’s touching you under the help of twenty or so gloves.

“Stiles- Stiles, I can’t see,” it sounds more simple than you actually feel.

Stiles breath quickens, you can hear him fairly well considering it feels like you’ve got earplugs in.

“That's okay bud, just breathe it out with me,” you hear him instruct and so you do, matching your breath with his until the blurry shapes form figures and the figures get details and you remember how to see again.

“Stiles,” you say with gauze trapped in your mouth.

“Scott,” he replies.

“Stiles.”

“I’m here.”

Then, when whatever it is that just happened is over, he half-lift you and waddles with you to his house, because his dad wouldn’t be there for a while and you can’t go home like this. You waddle past uncaring bystanders almost as if in a dream, no one stares at you. It’s as if you’re not even important enough to exist.  
Stiles isn’t gentle with you, so much as he is slow. In true Stiles fashion he is clumsy with you, nearly falling four times in the span of the twenty minute walk to his, his grip is too tight and is digging into your skin but you don’t care. You can’t process anything that’s happened in the past hour.

When you’re back at his, he flops you on his bed and then carefully pulls your hoodie off. He’s never done this before, you’ve never let him get this far. There’s blood on the inside of your hoodie, not visible from the outside, but crusted and dry to your eyes. 

He opens your bag and spills the content with all the grace of- well– of a Stiles. He pulls your mom’s old makeup bag out, it’s black and white with a faded pattern inside. Then he pulls your emergency water bottle out, before stripping your chest fully naked. As if he’d been doing it his whole, Stiles wets a cloth he fetched somewhere along the journey and washes the dry blood and drying toilet paper from your chest, you note a dull throb. If your brain were working, it would wonder when exactly Stiles learnt how to bandage wounds. But instead, you feel exhausted and tired and your deep, sadden eyes droop until you fall flat on your face into a blank, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imma just leave this here, thanks for reading.


	4. Still Somewhere in between+Mr Stilinski&Fighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott and Stiles fight and it's worse than it sounds. Stiles says some cruel stuff.

You wake up at Stiles house, except you don’t remember ever going there. You don’t remember changing into his Flash pj’s, which he totally dressed you in to make fun of you. In fact, there’s a great big bold question mark about what you’ve been doing the past few– hours? Days? You don’t know, all you know is Stiles is looking at you like you just killed his mom– which in hindsight was not the best comparison, nor the best question to say aloud.

“I– What- How could. You know what Scott– I don’t even care. Just go home and fucking kill yourself, I’m over looking after you like you’re the second coming of Christ.”

Which really stabbed the inner most-frail, most-vulnerable bits of you. Because, ouch.

“Huh?”

You feel more confused than ever, however you also feel the slightest bit desperate, because sometimes Stiles could be annoying, but he’s always been your best friend. Even when you guys fought over stupid stuff, like Flash vs Spiderman or not-so-stupid stuff, like him disapproving of your cutting, it’s always been you and him against the world. But he's staring at you broken and defeated, tired like you always feel and and and– no.

“I said get out! I’m tired Scott, I’m tired of not knowing if you’ll be alive when I wake up...I’m tired of you pushing me away! I’m tired of being your babysitter! You don’t know what it’s like seeing your best-friend kill himself and being able to say nothing…” He paused, breath shallow, “, and obviously you don’t care about my feelings or my opinions, so if you’re just gonna be an inconsiderate ass, then bye-bye. I’m done. Get the razor and finish it already, because gods know you’ve already killed me!”

You feel numb and stupid, because of course you’re a stupid inconvenience to the only person who matters and of course you’re an ass and... 

You desperately wish to say something, but instead you lower your head and walk out the front door. Mr Stilinski meets you there, his analytical eyes taking in the faded pajama shirt and jeans, the glassy eyes and the red hue to your nose, a hint of your oncoming tears that he noted years ago.

“Hey Scott, you not staying for dinner?”

You shake your head, gnawing at your lip almost hungrily and move forward. He catches your shoulder gently before you can leave the house and his soft eyes bore into you. He sighs gently.

“Well, if you’re not staying then how about I drop you off home?”

You mumble a no, your mind screaming leaveleaveleaveleavele-

“I insist,” he declares, moving you towards the car.

As he sit you in the jeep, the radio playing and him taping a tune on the steering wheel. You try your best, but by the time he reaches the chorus, the tears slip slowly down your face. They’re almost disbelieving as you slowly come to the realisation that you just lost your best-friend. Your only forever, the only person who knew all of you. 

You’re not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse, but Mr Stilinski ignores your tears even as you pull up to your driveway and scrub your eyes red. When you can breathe again, you unbuckle your belt, but Mr Stilinski’s suave voice stops you.

“Scotty, do you wanna tell me what just happened?”

He doesn’t ask if you want to talk, a strategic tactic to ensure you talk, but also have the illusion of free-will. You wonder if losing your best-friend means you get a lot more philosophical about stuff.

“I don’t think I’ll be around much for the time being,” is your low murmured non-answer.

He sighs, because he’s never been a particularly curious guy despite his line of work. Then he lays a large, gentle hand on your shoulder. You hate how much that small show of affection means to you. How it fills you with warmth and affection, how it makes you feel like you’re six again and everything’s a-okay.

“Well, if you ever need me Scott, no matter what you think will happen or what Stiles thinks, just call me, okay?”

You nod and murmur thanks, before making your way inside, past your mother, who’s sitting on the couch half-asleep. Past the empty hallway your dad used to chase you down, before lifting you in the air, laughter bright and alive. Past the bathroom you first cut yourself in, dark and damp. All the way to your room, where you fall to your knees on the ground and stay seated for what feels like hours.

Eventually you manage to crawl into bed and you just lay there. Blank. Empty. Dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading again.


	5. Nearing the end of the beginning+Mom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suicide attempts and too late conversations. Or Melissa finds out.

You don’t know how you’re doing it, but you haven’t cut in two weeks. That’s also the length of time that’s passed since Stiles stopped talking to you. You go to school, you don’t really eat much of anything and Mom’s noticed something’s up– which hurts because she noticed something was up when you stopped hanging with Stiles, but you’ve had damage and broken-beyond repair tattooed on your head since you were eleven and she didn’t say a damn thing. You can’t find it in you to be angry.

You’re numb. You can’t remember feeling happy or sad or angry. All you know are the broken days that you’ve lived by for four years and you’re so tired of being broken.

It accumulates in these weeks you go free of cutting. The festering hate in your stomach ultimately pulling you to the cold comfort of a razor to your thighs and blood pools around you in the boys locker room. You’re not so sure what’s happening, you wish that the cutting would pause everything like it usually does because everything is too fast, but it doesn’t pause. It’s still the same festering self-hate you’ve let consume you bit by bit these last four weeks. Thirteen is too young to die, but you think maybe if you died right now, it wouldn’t be so bad.

You wake up in a hospital and like the spell of numbness and hate had suddenly broken, you cry softly.

Then not so softly.

Violent tears unbidden fall, snot joining it quickly and you hate yourself. You hate yourself. You hate yourself. You hate yourself. You repeat that sentence until it’s the most glaringly obvious truth in the world. You’re disgusting.

“Mom,” you sob brokenly because you want to say I’m sorry and I love you and I want to die, but you can only repeat Mom.

“Oh baby...Shh it’ll be fine Scotty, shh baby– You don’t have to say a damn thing, I’m here, I’m always here.”

She sounds scared and tired and so desperate, because of that you miss that damn is the first curse word she’s ever used in front of you. She hugs you as you hold all of the broken pieces of your young life in your arms, wondering where everything went wrong and the only memory you can think of, is you half naked in the bathroom scrubbing away blood with a spiderman towel.

“We’re getting you a therapist,” Mom says pointedly when the tears have been shed and you’re just left feeling vaguely disappointed, “, and if you want me there that’s your right, but if not, it’s fine.”

You nod, listening to everything she says.

“And I’m taking two weeks off of work so we can talk about this, I will monitor anything sharp we have in the house and it will be hard to stop self-harming, but I promise you we’re going to do just that.”

You love how even with her hair messy, face blotchy from wiping her tears vigorously and eyes bloodshot, she still manages to sound so calm and authoritative. You love how she makes you feel important and hate loving how important she makes you feel.

She sighs softly, tucking a stray curl behind your ear.

“Baby boy, you have to talk to me about this sort of stuff, I’ve seen your chest Scott...Some of those scars are months, maybe even years old and I’m sorry I never noticed how hurt you were– But if Danny hadn’t come across you, I would’ve never known. And, I don’t– I deserve to know if your safe or happy and if you’re not then we can get through that together, but you need to tell me, okay?”

You nod. You don’t believe yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading.


	6. The end of the beginning + You.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get better and Scott's healing- ish.

Stiles comes in one day and he doesn’t leave.

You don’t talk, not through your mom’s pointed glances or Mr Stilinski’s abrupt departure from the room when you’re both around. Neither of you acknowledge the pain in the room, the pain and hurt sitting between you two. Not even as you’re allowed back home and mom lets you sleep with the door closed as long as Stiles is there with you. Not in the dead of the night, reserved for midnight conversations about everything.

For a while you think it’s pity holding the barest threads of your friendship and willing it to mend itself. Maybe even misplaced guilt, because Stiles is good with that. But Stiles never leaves you again.

Not in the days where you don’t eat and you lock yourself in your room, unable to take Mom’s heavy gaze, Stiles strained smiles or Mr Stilinski’s too soft touch.

Doesn’t leave in the hours you are curled in your bed unresponsive to everyone, him holding your hand under your blanket, while kneeling on the floor.

Not even in those rough minutes where you have a shard of glass from a science beaker you stole from school, intent on hurting and stopping and quietness. He holds you. Arms wound tightly around your shoulder. His hand over yours, elbow bent awkwardly and Scotty calm down, please, soft on his lips.

He’s there waiting for you with curly fries after your first appointment with the therapist. And every one thereafter leading to your tenth visit, when you’re finally ready to leave alone and he lets you attend every appointment until your twenty fifth alone. The twenty fifth appointment is when brings his wallet and you go to the movies, his pay (his dad’s pay) as a celebration for your last appointment. Mom take you two out for dinner afterwards and when Mr Stilinski sees you next, he grips your shoulder in his own way that says ‘I’m proud of you Scott.’

And them two are huge anchors through it all as well.

You don’t know if your mom’s been through this whole cutting or self-harming shit before, like with a patient, but she’s a godsend through it. She doesn’t hover half as much as you expect her to, but still two times more than you want her to, she’s firm when she needs to be. On the days you feel like rotting away peacefully, when Stiles can’t keep you sheltered and tethered to earth, she shakes you up. Forces you out and you don’t do much, but something about being out of the house makes things easier. 

Trips for ice cream, lunch at the local diners, movie nights, none of that is irregular. But then she’s so much more than kind. She yells at you, not in frustration or hurt, but to help you realise the anguish you’re causing. Some days that just makes it shittier. Most days it makes you cry because you’ve never felt so loved, because if you died at least three people would care and that’s three more than you’ve ever accounted for. 

Mr Stilinski is always there. Rides home, trips to get doughnuts–without Stiles sometimes, because Stiles is so conscientious about food with his dad since that health unit from the beginning of eighth grade. He’s there at your house making too greasy foods on the nights Mom has work, Stiles trying unsuccessfully to push him from the kitchen. He’s always happy to squeeze your shoulder and offer small comforts, he rolls his eyes at you and makes biting remarks at you like he does Stiles. You feel more apart of a family now, fourteen and broken, then you ever did eleven and scarless.

Mr Stilinski is the only one who forces you through a serious conversation, very one-sided as well. Your Mom tried a conversation, but mostly she instructed you and guided you. He talked to you, gently with a tone you suspect he’s only ever reserved for you and Stiles. The talk, it goes something like:

“I’ve lost so many people in my life Scotty– I can’t, no– We can’t lose you, your mom, Stiles and I, we love you, whether you believe it or not. We need you to live buddy, and if right now it you can only live for us, then we’ll help you until you can live for yourself.”

“Yes sir.”

Sigh.

“You don’t have to call me sir, Scott.”

You nod.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry Scott, it’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah but–”

“Scott, I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with deflection and if you don’t want to acknowledge what I said, that’s up to you, but we do love you Scott. Love you more than you could ever know…”

“....”

“....”

“....”

“Hey... Scott, hey– There’s no shame in crying boy, let loose. It hurts right now, of course it does, so cry the hurt out Scott.”

The sobs are loud and heartbroken and you’re sick of crying, but it feels so good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading again.


	7. Sometime After The Beginning+Freakin' Werewolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the beginning of after and Scott's doing better. Will it last?

You breakdown. You piece yourself together again. You breakdown. Rinse repeat. It works like that for the rest of the year, past your fourteenth and then suddenly, you’re fifteen.

You’re fifteen and you have your days. Days where nothing is good and there’s ash around you and you can’t breathe because asthma and not breathing because asthma sucks, but then you have Stiles. Who passes you your inhaler and holds your hand to calm you down. You have your Mom, who’s not at home quite as often, but she’s still equal parts firm and loving and spontaneous. You have Mr Stilinski, who still watches you and Stiles with too keen eyes. You don’t have the razor or the scalpel or the shards of glass that makes all the tics disappear. But you’re so balanced. Everything is alright and you’re happy.

You don't know how it happened but you are.

You trial for lacrosse, mostly because Danny asked and things are still that ‘You found me bleeding to death and you’re kinda awesome and I’m kinda really guilty, pizza?’ awkward. Literally that awkward. Stiles guffawed in your face when Danny walked away from the pizza you offered him during the one and only time he tried to bring up your suicide thing. The year of getting worse to get better did little to improve you social skills.

But yeah, balance. Weird to find freshmen year, but you do.

There’s a rhythm to you getting shoved by Jackson and pitied by Danny and the days you spend with Stiles. A rhythm to Coach Finstock yelling at you, but letting you use his office to change on the super, super bad days where you can’t stand being seen or touched bare skin to skin. To Mr Harris scolding Stiles and Mom’s affectionate exasperation. 

You haven’t cut in over a year. 

During the three days before the anniversary of your last cut, Stiles™ not Scott™, you get coerced into the woods with a half a dead body and a wolf. A wolf that bites you.

A werewolf that bit you. You lacking any scars should have clued you in, but you hate looking at your self-harm scars, so it takes a lot of pushing from Stiles to convince you that you’re a werewolf. With glowing eyes and pointy teeth and bulging muscles and no scars. All of them– gone. Then, comes after. 

After Allison and Derek and Peter and being a freakin’ werewolf– after or during or when you're watching death over and over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the read.


End file.
